Every year, Tod Caviness turns a handful of talented, sensitive poets into trained monkeys at the Fringe Poetry Vending Machine. Theatre patrons and random drunks at the Orlando Fringe give them a title and three words. This is what they give back.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

The Legend of Spaz Humperdink, Duck Gynecologist

Anyone who has never been tothat porn studio on Old Dirty MacDonald’s Farmis a depraved degenerate.The walk alone brings you closer to God,especially when you can see his beard floating in the cerulean skyright above the bright red barnsitting on the horizon for what seems like an eternal marchthrough pristine wheat fields whispering Heartland of ‘Merica the whole way.

Suddenly you’re opening the barn doors and Dirty Mac, as he’s known,is inviting you up to the loftto watch the spectacle unfold below.Rock Schlonger or Grover Niptwist preps over on a bale of crackling straw.

And someone lubes up the duck.

Spaz never does that. Spaz stays out of the production, sitting back in his white coat and wide hat under the shade of imported gorse outside.

The scene begins with some banal role playing.“So,” says Rock. “What brings you here?”“Quack,” says the duck.

The duck never seems confused once the action picks up.It seems horrified. It flaps and slaps its webbed toes against the actor’s thighs.But it knows what’s happening.

Spaz waits until he hears Dirty Mac yell cut.Then he strides in, casual as you please, still blowing steam off his coffee.He whispers to the duck for a moment, tells it that it’s beautiful. Tells it that it’s still wanted. Tells it that it’s loved.

Then he checks. “Nope,” he says, “she’s fine.”See, a female duck who so hates her mate can alter the path of her fallopian tubes, keeping the sperm in a permanent maze. And Spaz could tell if she had done it.

She did it. Every time.

Still, totally worth the five buck admission.

--

Oh, how I love the play this poem got. I remember the couple who ordered it well: cute, youngish, dapper, the type of folks I would have pegged for inspiration culled out of some Conor Oberst song. Sure enough, the girl provided the mandated words for the poem - "cerulean," "spectacle," and "gorse" (it's some kind of shrubbery).

And then her boyfriend writes this title to go with it. Was he pissed at her? Was he just one-upping her? I'll never know. Trevor Fraser wrote this, because ... well, if you know Trevor, how could you NOT give this to him? He proceeded to memorize and read it at the Poetry Smackdown the following night, to equal helpings of laughter and controversy. I always seem to think the Fringe celebrity judges will have a weirder sense of humor than we do, but Jameson Beane in particular was straight-up horrified by this poem. (Though to be fair, the version Trevor read that night specifically mentioned the duck being raped.)

Me, I found it educational and, um, edifying. According to Trevor, the thing about the fallopian tubes is totally a real fact.